Region

CAIRO — A summit of African leaders from war-torn Sudan's neighbours on Thursday urged an end to the fighting, as UN experts reported a mass grave had been discovered in the country's Darfur region.

While Cairo hosted the crisis meeting on the nearly three-month-old conflict, gun battles, explosions and the roar of fighter jets again shook the Sudanese capital Khartoum, residents told AFP.

At least 3,000 people have been killed and millions have fled their homes in the war between Sudan's rival generals, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

Leaders of Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic and Libya as well as of the African Union and Arab League met in Cairo to discuss the war and its regional impact.

The United Nations has warned that Sudan's conflict risks spiralling into "a full-scale civil war, potentially destabilising the entire region".

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi hailed the "noble efforts" of Sudan's neighbours in "receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees with limited resources in an extremely difficult global economic situation".

He called on the international community "to honour the commitments" made last month when donors pledged $1.5 billion in aid — less than half the estimated need for Sudan and its affected neighbours. 

The summit called on both parties to secure corridors for urgently needed aid, even as Sudan's humanitarian crisis deepened.

Hundreds of people were seen queueing for drinking water in Wad Madani, 200 kilometres south of Khartoum, and a 24-hour electricity blackout darkened most of the country overnight.

'Denied decent burial' 

Since the war erupted on April 15 between Sudan's army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, nearly 724,000 people have fled abroad, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

The Chadian president, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, said that within “just one week, Chad received more than 150,000 people, most of them women and children fleeing the violence”.

The IOM says 240,000 people have escaped to Chad from Sudan’s western region of Darfur, where entire towns have been ransacked.

The UN’s human rights office OHCHR on Thursday reported new evidence of atrocities in the region.

It said the bodies of at least 87 people allegedly killed by the RSF and its allies between June 13-21 were buried in a mass grave in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina near the Chad border.

Some of the victims belonged to the non-Arab Massalit ethnic group, while seven women and seven children were among the dead, the office said, adding that the RSF were “denying those killed a decent burial”.

‘Humanitarian disaster’ 

Sudan’s neighbours — many already mired in economic and political crises — have feared a widening regional spillover since the conflict began.

The president of Egypt, a close ally of the Sudanese army, said that over 250,000 Sudanese had fled to the northern neighbour, “joining around five million Sudanese citizens who have lived in Egypt for many years”.

Human Rights Watch said Thursday that thousands more Sudanese are “stranded in dire humanitarian conditions” on the border, and urged Cairo to “rescind its entry visa rule” which was recently toughened.

Central African Republic’s president, Faustin-Archange Touadera, warned of growing “small arms smuggling” across his country’s “porous border” with Sudan.

“There are severe shortages in food and fuel,” he said, warning of an impending “humanitarian disaster”.

The Cairo summit follows multiple efforts to broker an end to the violence and repeated US and Saudi-brokered ceasefires that were all violated.

East African regional bloc IGAD held talks Monday in Addis Ababa calling on the warring parties to “sign an unconditional ceasefire”.

The Sudanese army boycotted the gathering, after Khartoum’s foreign ministry objected to Kenyan President William Ruto’s leadership of the IGAD quartet because it accuses Nairobi of siding with the RSF.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called Thursday for diplomatic efforts to “align with the IGAD-African Union process”, while African Union Commission head Moussa Faki Mahamat urged a “political process without foreign interference”.

WAD MADANI, Sudan — The United Nations on Wednesday said nearly three months of war in Sudan have uprooted more than 3 million people, and called for the warring sides to face "accountability".

Britain said it was taking action. It announced sanctions on businesses it said were associated with Sudanese military groups on both sides of the conflict.

Fighting has raged in the northeast African country since mid-April, when army chief Abdel Fattah Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), turned on each other.

Safa Msehli, a spokeswoman for the UN's International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Geneva, told AFP that more than three million people had fled their homes because of the conflict.

IOM figures showed that more than 2.4 million people were now displaced within Sudan, while nearly 724,000 have escaped across the country's borders, in a continuously increasing stream.

"This is more than a figure, however: these are people who have been uprooted, fleeing for their lives," Msehli said, appealing for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

"We need the international community's sustained support to provide aid and protection to those affected by the conflict," she said.

Khartoum's millions of residents, cornered in the capital often without water or electricity in the searing heat of summer, were again subjected to air raids on Wednesday, witnesses said.

"Planes have been pounding RSF bases since dawn," one resident told AFP.

Dozens of civilians have been killed in air raids, and paramilitaries have established bases in residential areas.

Witnesses also reported artillery fire in Khartoum on Wednesday.

The conflict "risks morphing into an ethnicised, tribalised and ideologised conflict which is much closer to being a full-blown civil war," the United Nations Sudan chief Volker Perthes told reporters in Brussels.

Perthes, whom Burhan ordered out of the country on June 9 as “persona non grata”, said his deputy was running the UN mission from Port Sudan, while he was moving the main office to Kenya’s capital Nairobi.

“Accountability is a much broader concept than only a judicial one,” he said.

“It is about whether the Sudanese people would allow the leaders of the warring parties to have any leadership function after this war.”

Around 3,000 people have been killed, and the UN has warned of possible crimes against humanity in the western region of Darfur.

Perthes said the situation was causing a “humanitarian catastrophe — again” in Sudan, and putting pressure on neighbouring Chad, which was taking in many refugees and whose food supply lines through Sudan were cut.

IOM figures show more than 239,000 people have crossed into Chad.

Perthes warned of a “risk that neighbouring states are being dragged into the conflict”.

He said the UN backed “linked” diplomatic overtures by the east African regional bloc IGAD and an Egypt-hosted summit of Sudan’s neighbours on Thursday.

Many truces have been agreed and quickly broken since the fighting in Sudan erupted.

Previous deals have been brokered by Saudi Arabia and the United States, but now the IGAD bloc has said it would ask the African Union to look into possibly deploying the East Africa Standby Force in Sudan “for the protection of civilians and... humanitarian access”.

The force is usually tasked with election observer missions.

Human rights violations including “murder, rape and looting”, are fuelling a desire among ordinary Sudanese to see the back of the warring generals, Perthes said.

While he was not directly calling for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to bring the generals to justice, he said: “The ICC of course is watching — it’s not up to me to ask the ICC to take action, but I think they are on it.”

The United Kingdom on Wednesday said it was sanctioning firms associated with both the army and RSF “fuelling the devastating conflict in Sudan by providing funding and arms”.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the sanctions “are directly targeting those whose actions have destroyed the lives of millions” in an “unjustified” war.

Last month the United States also sanctioned companies linked to both the army and the RSF.

BEIRUT — Israeli forces fire wounded three members of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbollah movement on Wednesday near the border with Israel, a security source in southern Lebanon said.

The incident comes amid tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border area, a stronghold of the Shiite movement and the site of sporadic skirmishes.

"Three Hizbollah members were wounded by Israeli fire near the border," the source told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Three other sources with knowledge of the incident also said Hizbollah members had been wounded. One said a sound grenade was fired and that three members were "lightly" hurt.

The Israeli forces said in a statement that "a number of suspects approached the northern security fence with Lebanon and attempted to sabotage the security fence in the area".

"Soldiers immediately spotted the suspects and used means to distance them," the army said, adding that "the identity of the suspects is unknown".

An AFP correspondent said the incident took place near the village of Al Bustan.

The Israeli forces released footage it said was of the incident showing several people approaching the fence before an apparent blast caused them to run away.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which acts as a buffer between Lebanon and Israel, said it was "aware of disturbing reports about an incident along the Blue Line".

"The situation is extremely sensitive. We urge everyone to cease any action that may lead to escalation of any kind," it said in a statement.

Nasrallah to speak

Israel and Hizbollah fought a devastating war in 2006 after the group captured two Israeli soldiers.

Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was scheduled to give a televised speech later Wednesday to mark the anniversary of the 2006 war.

UNIFIL was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon in reprisal for a Palestinian attack. The UN mission was beefed up in response to the devastating 2006 conflict, and operates in the south near the border.

Lebanon and Israel are technically at war.

Wednesday’s incident comes less than a week after the Israeli army struck southern Lebanon following an anti-tank missile launch from its northern neighbour. The missile exploded in the border area between the two foes.

That same day, Hizbollah had denounced Israel for building a concrete wall around the town of Ghajar.

The Blue Line cuts through Ghajar, formally placing its northern part in Lebanon and its southern part in the Israeli-occupied and annexed Golan Heights.

The foreign ministry on Tuesday said Lebanon would file a complaint with the United Nations Security Council over Israel’s “annexation” of the north of Ghajar.

Considered a “terrorist” organisation by many Western governments, Hizbollah is the only side not to have disarmed following Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, and it is also a powerful player in Lebanese politics.

In June, Hizbollah said it shot down an Israeli drone that had flown into Lebanon’s southern airspace.

In April, Israel’s military said soldiers had shot down a drone that entered its airspace from Lebanon, a day after a barrage of rockets was fired into Israel.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli forces evicted a Palestinian family from their home in Israeli-occupied East  Jerusalem on Tuesday to make way for Zionist settlers after a long legal battle, officials and an AFP correspondent said.

Since 1978, the Sub Laban family had fought in the Israeli courts against their eviction from their home in the Muslim Quarter of the walled Old City.

But early on Tuesday, police arrived to remove the family from their home following a court order.

"They do not have the right to expel me from my house," Nora Abu Laban, 68, told AFP.

"They are thieves and they steal everything from us, they stole the house, the lands, the youth."

Israeli and Palestinian activists jostled with Israeli forces in the aftermath of the eviction.

One held a placard that read “A family was evicted today” as settlers looked on, video footage filmed by AFP showed.

In May, the Sub Laban family had been served with an eviction notice and told to vacate the building by June 11.

The “family was forcibly evicted from their home by Israeli police”, Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for Palestinians, said in a statement.

He said 12 Israeli activists protesting against the eviction, seven women and five men, were arrested.

“Concerted efforts to evict Palestinians from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem may amount to forcible transfer,” Sunghay said.

“Forcible transfer is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime.”

The European Union expressed “regret” over the decision.

It urged the “Israeli government to respect international law and let these families live where they have been living for decades”.

Hazem Qasem, a spokesperson for Hamas, the Islamist group which controls the coastal Gaza Strip enclave, described the eviction as a “crime” and part of the “Zionist war on the Arab identity of Jerusalem”.

The Jewish settlers are part of an organisation called Atara Leyoshna.

According to anti-settlement watchdog Ir Amim, some 150 Palestinian families in Jerusalem’s Old City and nearby neighbourhoods are currently threatened with eviction because of “discriminatory laws and state collusion with settler organisations”.

The group says such evictions are part of “a strategy to cement Israeli hegemony of the Old City basin, the most religiously and politically sensitive part of Jerusalem and a core issue of the conflict”.

Israel captured Jerusalem’s Old City in the 1967 June War, before occupying it in a move regarded as illegal by the UN.

WAD MADANI, Sudan — Conflict-torn Sudan is on the brink of a "full-scale civil war" that could destabilise the entire region, the United Nations warned on Sunday, after an air strike on a residential area killed around two dozen civilians.

The ministry of health reported "22 dead and a large number of wounded among the civilians" from what it described as an air strike on Saturday on Khartoum's sister city Omdurman, in the district of Dar Al Salam, which means "House of Peace" in Arabic.

After nearly three months of war between Sudan's rival generals, the air strike is the latest incident to provoke outrage.

Around 3,000 people have been killed in the conflict, survivors have reported a wave of sexual violence and witnesses have spoken of ethnically targeted killings. There has been widespread looting, and the UN warned of possible crimes against humanity in the Darfur region.

A video posted by the health ministry on Facebook showed apparently dismembered bodies lying partly covered on the ground after the air strike. Several women were among the victims.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fighting the regular army, claimed that the "air strikes" killed 31.

Residents contacted by AFP also confirmed an air strike but on Sunday, the armed forces released a statement "clarifying that the air force did not deal with any hostile targets in Omdurman yesterday".

Since the war began, paramilitaries have established bases in residential areas, and they have been accused of forcing civilians from their homes.

Witnesses reported more air strikes near the presidential palace in central Khartoum on Sunday, as well as machine gun clashes and artillery fire in the city's south.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday condemned the air strike in Omdurman, which he said "reportedly killed at least 22 people" and wounded dozens, his deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said in a statement.

Guterres "remains deeply concerned that the ongoing war between the armed forces has pushed Sudan to the brink of a full-scale civil war, potentially destabilising the entire region", Haq said.

Sudan, in northeast Africa, borders other impoverished countries which have a history of unrest.

Nearly 3 million people have been uprooted by Sudan’s fighting, among them almost 700,000 who have fled to neighbouring countries, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

The UN and African blocs have warned of an “ethnic dimension” to the conflict in the western region of Darfur, where the United States, Norway and Britain have blamed the RSF and allied militia for most of the widespread violations.

Concentrated in Darfur and the capital Khartoum, fighting has also been reported in Blue Nile state near Ethiopia, as well as in South Kordofan state.

Overnight Saturday-Sunday residents in El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan and a commercial hub south of Khartoum, reported renewed fighting in their area.

“There is an utter disregard for humanitarian and human rights law that is dangerous and disturbing,” said Haq, expressing support for efforts by the African Union and East African bloc IGAD to end Sudan’s crisis.

On Monday leaders of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan — IGAD members handling the Sudan file — are to meet in Addis Ababa.

Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo have been invited but neither side has confirmed they will attend.

Several Sudanese civilian figures are already there, however, “in order to accelerate peace efforts”, said Khalid Omer Yousif, who was fired from the government in 2021 when Daglo and Burhan led a coup, before their falling out.

Numerous ceasefires in the war have been announced and ignored.